The present invention relates generally to the field of electronic communication over a computer network. Particularly, the present invention relates to the expansion of multi-lingual electronic communication through translation services for documents and messages available through the Internet.
The recent surge in media attention to the Internet, and especially the World Wide Web, coupled with the continuing growth in home PC ownership have resulted in a growing diversity of the Internet user population. No longer is the Internet the province of software experts; thousands of novice users have begun to come online each day. Software like CompuServe's Web Browser lets users quickly connect to and find useful content online. This phenomenon is not restricted to the United States or to English-speaking countries. Growth in online usage in Europe and Asia is increasing even more quickly than in the U.S.
While interest in the online world is at a peak, a significant obstacle exists to broad usage of the Internet for non-English speakers. The vast majority of Internet content is in English, and is therefore inaccessible to users with other native languages. Translation of Internet documents by a human translator is not a practical solution for two reasons. First, human translation is costly and slow. A translator can typically produce 300-400 words per hour at costs of 12¢ per word or more. Second, in order to have a translator convert Internet documents to the user's native language, the user would have to download every document he was interested in to provide it to the translator. This is a time-consuming process, and if the user knows no English, he will not even be able to assess the relevance of the document before downloading it. This would result in wasted time and translation costs since inevitably, some of the documents selected will not prove to be worthwhile.
The present invention allows non-English speaking Internet users to access and understand information available from the World Wide Web and related sources. Language translation software (known as machine translation, or MT) is combined with Internet software to allow non-English speaking Internet users to quickly generate translations of online text. The process is automated and therefore, less costly and time-consuming than human translation. Advantages of the present invention are explained further in relation to the following detailed description of the invention, drawings, and claims.